Customer comments on this Youngstown Ohio Book
 This is not an anti-war novel...
... this is a poor attempt at rediscovering the truths of Christ's passion. Faulkner says very little as to what his opinion of war is, his characters instead demonstrate an ethic that is apart from war. It is instead a story that lives within a war without being a commentary on war. Unfortunately, it is incomprehensible in language and style. Once you finish, it does redeem itself somewhat, in that you see what the point was (for most of it). But it is a harsh, rocky road to the end. I had to read it for a class... i wouldn't have gotten anywhere otherwise. Highly not recommended to anyone but Faulkner fanatics.
 too much, too worthy
Iıve read some other novels by Faulkner, and this is the first away from Yoknapatawpha. Personally, I like most of the time difficult reading, with which I can struggle to understand it, even when sometimes (like this) I donıt get it at all. I find that is brave in an author, to write whatever his head produces, without caring if the reader is going to get it. I think Faulkner wrote a great part of this novel without caring. The story is captivating in its resemblance to jesus life not quite accurately, but in the exact level to find it believable. And it shows how a single life is important for the rest of us.
 For the patient, a treasure
I must agree that, at times, the experience of reading _A Fable_ is much like feeling one's way through a very dark tunnel. However, there is indeed a light at the end of that tunnel; as with many of Faulkner's works, the individual stories that make up the novel dont come together until the last hundred or so pages. It takes a very patient reader to glean the important details from the beginning and middle of the novel, and to remember those details when they emerge again later in the book. One must also be fairly well-acquainted with Christ's passion in order for a true understanding of the correlation to reveal itself (which, in many places, it didn't for me). Contrary to the book's selling-points, Faulkner is not merely retyping the Christ story in _A Fable_. He's updating a myth (or "fable," if you will), and using his narration to describe humanity's condition in mid-century (cf. many paragraphs w/ 1950 Nobel Prize speech). This is a long, tedious, and fanatically detailled narrative, but a great novel that pays off with a terrific closing 50 pages for the patient reader. Both the new and the acquainted should be prepared for Faulkner at his most brilliant and difficult.
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